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Similan Islands Thailand

Fascinating islands in the Andaman Sea

The archipelago is one of the best dive areas worldwide, the variety of animals and species is overwhelming.

This is a small archipelago in the Andaman Sea approximately 100 kilometers northwest of Phuket. The Marine National Park is a clean, sometimes not so clean, due to the laziness of National Park Headquarter employees’ pristine environment full of beauty, above and under the water surface, a top spot for scuba diving on this planet. On Ko Miang - island no. 4 - is a camping ground and some local style bungalows.

Diving and other live aboard trips are available for several days but also “day trips” which can be booked at any hotel and travel agent in Phuket and Khao Lak pictures are below. Most trips start by boat from Tap Lamu pier (very easy to reach via coastal highway No. 4). You can book all tours either from Pure Car Rent or any other company in Phuket Town. The reason why we indicate Pure is they are reliable you can also hire motorbikes and cars there and you wont be getting cheated or fall pray to one of the well know scam.

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A colorful underwater world.

Photos

Unfortunately the place is totally neglected by the Marin National Park People who play the whole day with their mobil phones at the office on the pier instaed of maintaining and protecting the place and afterwards, as usual in Thailand they make the foreigners responsible for everything negativ happen.

The archipelago is one of the best dive areas worldwide, the variety of animals and species is overwhelming.

Booking can be done at the travel agent indicated below which is right at the pier. Come there between 7-8 am because after, all are gone. For live aboard tour & diving go to a bigger travel agent anywhere around there and book your trip. Prices can vary from around US$100 to over US$3000 for a few days live aboard scuba diving, depending on your demands. For a start asks at Met Sine Travel at the pier they do booking for speedboats and accommodations on island No.4.Tel: 076 443276, 443340 fax 595164, you can use also most other agents.

Avoid the National Park Headquarter before the pier, this is a disaster zone, extremely infested with mosquitoes and nobody works, they all hang on their mobile phone and want to get rid of any customer as quick as possible. See the rubbish on the beach picture below its there since several month, its their job to get this cleaned, but no one cares... as usual and if they get caught they blame the "farang, this are the tourists" to make the problem. Which is as everyone know pure nonsense, which farang will leave the Castrol motor oil canister at the beach and the empty plastic bottles of the detergent liquid plus debris coming from the long tail boats etc.?

It is very common here to blame foreigners if anything negative happen but usually tourists have nothing to do with it. This reminds me in particular to the demonstrations which happen in Phuket against the shooting of the movie "The Beach" with Di Caprio on Phi Phi Islands. They blamed the foreign crew who shot the movie of all kind of environment problems and the funny or rather not so funny thing was that all the "demonstrators" where school children who were manipulated by teachers who were in front and the back of the about 100 kids telling them via megaphone what to scream. It's more than strange sometimes out there, I don't know what they think they gain from; maybe they have nothing to do. The kids didn't even know what was written on the posters they held, because none of the kids spoke or understood English. I asked my girlfriend who was with me to ask them if they know what they are demonstrating for, they smiled and answered, the teachers told them to come with them and they got a day off in the school if they do the demonstration. Unfortunately such scams continously happen on many issues and is one of the major reason why the different groups fight each other all time until sometimes the military must interfere otherwise this "so called" political parties ruin the country.

Islands and coasts

Some countries around the Andaman Sea such as Myanmar, Malaysia and India have been under British colonial rules as “east India”..

This great natural environment at several archipelagos which is the Similans, Surin, Tarutao further south and the Myeik or Mergui archipelago in Myanmar to the north is one of the very few places on earth still preserving some kind of pristine environment, see the whale sharks, he is sleeping, maybe got too much Chang beer.

The name Andaman

It probably come from the Indian monkey god "Hanuman" and indicates the other countries bordering this part of the Indian Ocean. The islands are still an awesome area on planet earth, including the Indian part with still having hundreds endemic species. There are pretty sea snakes, lizards plus salt water crocodiles (in the Indian part) and other species which have not been categorized and documented yet.

Currently (2016) they closed some islands for visiting there have been too many people around in recent years especially after the Russian and Chinese "Tsunami" went over. the underwater area is most interesting, every year thousands of tourists come for scuba diving, usually via liveaboard. More and more people from Bangladesh are migrating to the islands vie the so called “boat people” process to get away from their totally overpopulated country. The indigenous inhabitants are the Salone (Myanmar) and Moken (Thailand) which are the same. The people are living from fishing, caching small animals such as wild pigs and do some pearl diving which is less now because of pearl farming.

Thailand sland vacation

Looking for a great place to go on island and scuba diving vacation? There is little that beats the Similans.People love the area around Khao Lak with summer weather year round, great sunshine, clear emerald waters and wonderful seafronts. Khao Lak and the islands are like a postcard shot and there is no population on the islands except on the main one, which is No.4 is a small Thai style bungalow cluster. It’s somehow like a Robinson experience. Another is the Surin archipelago, about 100 km further north, there is a colony of sea gypsies and there are accommodations, every day a ship leaves from the pier for the islands.

Many vacationers from northern Europe choose to move to Khao Lak and take one day trips into the ocean, excursions are offered every day. There are so many great ways to enjoy your vacation around this part of the country, the possibilities are endless. So if you are looking for a great way to visit the beautiful and exotic destinations during your vacations that's the right destination

.In the Mergui or Myeik Archipelago in Myanmar are more than 800 pristine islands where no one set the foot on since British colonial times, this is all north of the equator. The seas have been explored by the Portuguese colonialists and probably hundreds of years before by Arab and Indian seafarer. Phuket Island was even already mentioned by Claudius Ptolemy as Junk Ceylon in 157 AD.

The Tsunami disaster​​

Tsunami Photos

When the Tsunami hit the islands luckely only a few people where there because most tourists had breakfast at the beach hotels on the cost and there the dead and there the dead count was well over 3000. Everything was badly damaged by the Tsunami. An undersea earthquake which struck western Indonesia in the morning of the 26.Dec. 2004 was the trigger. The resulting Tsunami smashed into the west coast of Thailand and other countries bordering the Indian Ocean.

Much was destroyed and thousands of people lost their life, it was the worst natures disaster in this area’s history. Most of the infrastructure, the buildings, the hotels and beach resorts has quickly been restored in a quick recovery.